Channing Yu, conductor

American orchestra and opera conductor Channing Yu is Music Director of the Mercury Orchestra in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Associate Artistic Director of the Refugee Orchestra Project in New York City. He is the national winner of the 2010 American Prize in Orchestral Conducting in the community orchestra division.

He recently served as Music Director of the Dudley Orchestra in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Music Director of Bay Colony Brass in Watertown, Massachusetts; Leader of the Powers Community String Orchestra in Belmont, Massachusetts; and Conductor of the Massachusetts Youth Symphony Project Preparatory String Orchestra in Belmont, Massachusetts.

He has also served as Artistic Director and Conductor of the Lowell House Opera, the oldest opera company in New England, where he conducted over thirty fully staged performances with orchestra, including Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, Puccini’s Turandot, Verdi’s Otello, and Puccini’s Tosca. For his musical direction of Tosca, he was awarded second prize in the 2011 American Prize in Opera Conducting national competition.

He served as guest conductor at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, in its production of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s baroque opera Les arts florissants. He was guest conductor of Atrium Winds in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. He was also invited to guest conduct the Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra in Greensburg, Pennsylvania.